Friday, March 16, 2012

#ArtIHeart 4 - The Reason I'm Single?

Art I Heart

Share the art you love from your walls,
a birthday card, what your child drew at school, that you saw in The National
Gallery in London...

1. Choose one piece of art that has a
short personal story behind it. It could be something on your wall, something
you've seen in a gallery and love, homedrawn, on a postcard, on a birthday card,
something by Degas or something by your DS.

2. Take a photograph, scan
or download a picture of your picture and post it along with the short story
about why you are drawn to it, have it on your wall, bought it, or hate it.
Don't forget to link back to the linky so your readers can see the other
entries.

This was the picture that all the fuss was about. This was the picture that got me a lecture from my Feng Shui/Chinese Medicine friend about ruining my chances of ever getting married. This picture was the reason I bought this picture of perfect coupledom in order to strike a balance. However, my friend was adamant that the Girl With Lemons had to go if I were to make room for a man in my home. Quite frankly, I think I made the better choice ;)

Girl With Lemons is part of the Israel Museum Collection and what I have framed is a poster from the museum shop. I fell in love with this painting because of the colours, the setting and the girl herself. Maybe for the same reason that Mummy Plum chose this picture. Or I may be flattering myself. I knew that this was going to hang in my kitchen when I moved apartments and I even chose the colours of the kitchen around it. See...

Well you can't design a kitchen around someone and then chuck them out, can you?

I saw Girl With Lemons once in The Broadwalk Shopping Centre in Edgware while I was visiting family. She didn't have her lemons and in fact she was about nine years old as opposed to the older teenager on my wall. But it was the same girl by the same artist. I wanted to buy the print (small poster?) of her younger self but the stall holder had it framed in a fancy gilt surround and wanted 40 pounds for it. So I left her in Edgware.

I did some research (google) and found that W. Bouguereau (1825 - 1905, French) spent his life painting my girl - you can see loads of her here. He was married twice and had five children. As he painted this girl from when she was a child, I was hoping she was one of his daughters. But it seems she was a model he hired to pose for him.

P.S. did you notice the small picture tucked into the frame at the bottom R-H corner? I was so freaked out by my friend's lecture at the time that I cut up a catalogue from the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, NYC, and placed little copies of paintings depicting couples and families wherever I could find places. When I was going through IVF I placed mothers and daughters everywhere. There is one other one left tucked into the sockets in my bedroom. And I'm so not superstitious - I don't know what came over me.

as the quote goes "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade" - life is about what you make it. you love this piece, it perhaps makes you think of yourself, but it's in no way going to determine how you live your life or who will come into your life... feng shui or not... i hope that it's staying right where it is?x

It certainly is (staying right where it is). It's hard to know what the right thing to do is these days - NLP and lifecoaching tell you that you rule your own destiny, feng shui says it's all about your stuff and where you place it, and the orthodox Rabbis say that God's had you planned from before you were born so no use fighting it. Me.... I dunno.

ahh I'm pleased you posted this follow up post to your couple one! it is a lovely painting I am not really superstitious at all good job really seems as we live in house number 13! I too dont really have a clue with what makes life turn out the way it does, is it us making our own destiny or fate or indeed our choices about objects and positioning them.. whichever i guess doesn't really matter as long as we enjoy the ride :)

Seriously? Why don't you put up some of your photography? Anyway I guess it says you're pretty much dedicated to your marriage if you only have your Ketuba (Jewish marital contract) up - but we knew that about you anyway :).

I take it back! There's a birkat habayit (housewarming gift) thing and a tehillim thing (my mom was buying one and I liked it so she bought me one too). There's also a modeh ani thing in Eliana's room and a shema thing in Ami's. Not my style but they used to be in Gil's room when he was a little boy so we inherited them.I'm so frum. Apparently.How do I not even notice these things?

About

At the age of 46 and four years after I started the IVF process, I brought home my beautiful DD. This a blog about a woman for whom not being a mother was unacceptable. Add to the mix that I'm also an Expat, Jewish, British, Israeli (sort of), Single, a Teacher, a Writer, a Homemaker, and you have Midlife Singlemum.

This is mine

All texts and most photographs on this blog are the copyright of Rachel Selby. I sometimes use photographs from Google or Pinterest. I try to always give credit but if I have infringed anyone's copyright please let me know.